The ANC’s integrity commission formation resolution, emanating from its post-Mangaung 2012 policy and elective conference was, yet again, another misleading intervention enacted solely to create an impression that the ANC is seriously concerned by and opposed to institutionalised corruption that’s deeply entrenched in the public sector since the advent of South Africa’s constitutional democracy in 1994.

This explains why the commission still has no terms of reference defining its mandate and regulating its operations, and thus no locus standi, seven years later.

The dominant consensus within the ANC and in the broader society is that the conceptualisation and actualisation of this structure serve to detect and prosecute “tainted” leaders, and ultimately disqualify them from eligibility to governance deployment. This is laughably naïve, practically impossible and quite frankly a false solution to a serious crisis.

What informs my rejection and automatic dismissal of an intervention that has enjoyed a consistently positive welcome across the racial, class, ideological and political spectrums in the country? Well, a number of factors.

First and foremost, the integrity commission owes its existence to fatally flawed, liberal conceptions of ethics (and corruption), which ultimately serve to maintain the status quo instead of ushering society towards fundamental change.

To date, South Africa as an idea and actualisation, no matter the periodisation (1652, 1910, 1948, 1994), is an unethical polity predicated on dispossession, oppression and super-exploitation of the many by a few. Today, this abominable reality is cleverly masked by universal adult franchise and regular elections; an autonomous (not independent) judiciary; a self-regulating, hugely concentrated lily-white-owned media; a seductively romantic Constitution with a bill of rights and, most horribly, a debt-ridden and highly precarious black middle class straddling both working class and lower petty bourgeois statuses, manufactured and highly marketed and advertised to show the illusion of black success and economic transformation in a country where 64 of every 100 Africans are poor compared to just one out of every 100 white counterparts.

And, from the vantage point of power and privilege, this is a country where the top two wealthiest citizens (white males, obviously) have a combined wealth equivalent to the poorest half of the population (who are all black and disproportionately African). You might even erroneously think that it is Africans who constitute a mere 9% of the total population and whites the overwhelming 80%, where the converse is actually true.

What do the above statistics and facts have to do with the ANC’s integrity commission and its work? Everything.

The commission, and by extension the ANC, conceives of lack of ethics, integrity and credibility as a personal plague from which only certain individuals suffer when the truth is that the democratic mode of production, accumulation, exchange and consumption is a continuation of the historic colonial social formation dating back to 1652.

Hegelian moral philosophy, largely captured in his seminal Philosophy of Right, correctly posits that ethics (or lack thereof) fundamentally derive from the state, and that if the state is unjust and unethical, this will, in turn, find central expression in society and citizens’ individual general lack of moral scruples, fairness and justice orientation. This is precisely the reality of South Africa today.

My second thesis on the grand folly that is the integrity commission is gravely revealing of the epic ethical collapse and intellectual degeneration within the ANC since the dawn of democracy. It’s two-pronged.

First, how and why are “morally reprehensible” individuals allowed, totally unfettered, to join and rise to the highest echelons of party authority and influence and only intercepted when availing themselves to be deployed to the various branches and organs of government? Is the ANC telling South Africa that it has no qualms with being led by scoundrels itself, but would never allow the same phenomenon to creep into the governance arena, itself composed of ANC cadre-deployees? At this, we laugh in order not to weep. Whatever happened to the moral and competency leadership criteria set out in Through the Eye of the Needle.

The other aspect of my second thesis relates to the singular application of the integrity test only in relation to Cabinet deployments. This is deeply disturbing and gives credence to the long-held notion that, contrary to the doctrine of separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution, which holds all three branches of government equal, but with differing tasks, the executive is for all practical purposes superior to the national legislature and in the main the latter is a rubber-stamp of the former.

There are individuals who have been sworn in as Members of Parliament without trouble, but they are suddenly being demonised and said to be morally unfit for the sole purpose of preventing them from becoming ministers. Perfectly fit to be lawmakers but of inferior moral stock to be implementers thereof? Or this is just an internal scramble for blue lights and bodyguards fought through, among others, the terrain of the so-called integrity commission?

Third, the creation of extra-legal hurdles for politically ambitious leaders who otherwise meet the constitutional requirements to participate freely in the open and democratic processes of this country, after such a long, bitter and deadly struggle for black people to enjoy political rights, is fraught with manifold dangers and complications.

The worst that will happen is for persons deprived of the opportunity to avail themselves for governance deployment to successfully sue the commission (read the ANC) and yet again draw the courts back into being the decider within the realm of politics. The very same people, when it later suits them, who turn around in contemptuous condemnation, and accuse the courts of judicial overreach and violation of the sacrosanct separation of powers principle — the cornerstone of this constitutional democracy.

The ANC cannot fix government and its various organs and agencies without itself first undergoing a sincere, thorough, comprehensive and impartial process of organisational reinvention, political renewal and moral regeneration. Charity begins at home.

If the announcement of the establishment of a political school, under the stewardship of ideologically astute and intellectually respected Dr David Masondo, derives from serious political stocktaking and commitment to rebuilding, and not just one of the countless desperate measures taken to immediately appease this or that constituency — as has become quintessentially ANC modus operandi — there might be something to look forward to.

The ANC can only cleanse itself from the ground up, primarily through comprehensive political education (which includes political-leadership ethics) at branch level, going all the way up to its president. The culmination of this process will altogether eliminate the need for a vetting process only at the top. DM